08 Roy Moran | ThinkNEXT Session 2

Andrew Estes (00:14)

Welcome back to the Nexus Church Planting Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Estes.

Twice a year, we gather leaders from across our network for an event we call ThinkNEXT It's a time to step back from the pace of ministry, connect with like-minded leaders, and refocus on the mission of making disciples who make

This episode comes from our most recent ThinkNEXT gathering. Our theme was From Maintenance to Multiplication, Reframing Your Mindset to Allow the Gospel to Replicate. Together, we explored how the gospel spreads not through complexity or control, but through simple reproducible practices that ordinary believers can pass on from day one. We hope this session encourages you and challenges you to help you lead your church toward multiplication.

Let's jump in to today's session.

Nexus: Church Planting & Leader Care (01:05)

All right, let's start with, let's just have a discussion here a little bit. Questions, comments, criticisms, concerns, queries?

I was just curious, how did your prayer change after you realized 900,000 people didn't fit in your auditorium? Or 300,000 people didn't fit in your auditorium? We began to pray for...

multiplying disciples, disciples who would make disciples. And as we thought about these spaces, we looked at our 300,000 people and we realized that there weren't 300,000 people. I mean, there were 300,000 heads, but they existed in all kinds of small social networks.

And so we stopped trying to reach people and we started trying to reach networks. We started trying to figure out, okay, ⁓ where are all of the CrossFit gyms in our area? How can we plant the gospel in every CrossFit gym in the 816 area code?

know, elementary schools. What are all the social connections that exist in those 300,000 people? And how could we begin to pray for those planting and those social networks?

Other questions? Comments?

You talked about.

The difference between.

talking about Jesus or talking of Jesus? Tell me more about that, I don't want to understand the delineation. So, when I think about talking about Jesus, I put that in the category of I can talk about the facts about Jesus. He lived, He died, He died for me.

⁓ His blood was shed for the sins of the world, ⁓ that he's the son of God, he's ⁓ the second person of the Trinity, all kinds of things about Jesus. ⁓ But when I begin to speak of Jesus, I talk about how did Jesus make a difference in my life today?

as I shared before here with one of our brothers, ⁓ this wonderful place here, incredible, ⁓ exemplary type ⁓ local fellowship that exists here. But I would bet that I could take the cream of the crop here, and I could go to their neighborhoods, and I could ask their neighbors, what?

difference does Jesus make in their life that you don't have?

And many non-believing people have a hard time seeing that Jesus makes any difference. Maybe you have a better fence or a bigger TV than I have, ⁓ does it make a difference in the quality, do they see a difference in the quality of life in the marriage, in the way they've raised their kids? And I'm not just talking about what they didn't allow their kids to do.

But I'm talking about the quality of the life that exists in those kids. Are those kids more loving and more vibrant, more human than other kids? so unfortunately, that's fine, go ahead, you can make noise. ⁓ Please, no apologies. Stop saying you're sorry. It's just that the quality of the kind of

people that follow Jesus, a lot of non-believing people look at us and they don't think there's any difference. We just believe something different. And that's it. And they're asking the question, what difference does it make? They're not asking the question, is it true? And so that's our struggle, is to get that across. And when I think of speaking of Jesus, I'm thinking about

You know, how does Jesus affect ⁓ me when I'm taking my garbage cans to ⁓ the street on a windy day and I open up and pour some more ⁓ recycling stuff in and it blows it all over the street. And I'm out there, you know, grabbing, trying to get all this kind of stuff together. It's like, where does Jesus, does Jesus make a difference in that moment?

in my life? Is he that real to me that I could think that he's up to something in my life? And so that's the deal. It's like speaking of Jesus is having a quote testimony that is more than, you know, it's this week, not 15 years ago.

I'm take a moment to.

Where they're rethinking discipleship in a sense going back to the beginning asking what is the core gospel? What does it mean to a disciple?

six false gospels. And I called him up one day and said, we found another one that we're guilty of. ⁓ There's a difference between preaching about Jesus, the gospel about Jesus or the gospel of Jesus. We can preach the Apostles Creed, but we're not actually preaching the gospel Jesus preached. And so you're talking along the same line, think, announcing the kingdom's arrival is one thing, just talking about Jesus is an entirely different thing.

Is that where you're headed? Yeah, exactly.

Part of the way, and feel free, I'm gonna answer this question, but I'd love for you to interrupt me here. Part of the way that we actually make that happen is by really making sure that people are getting their fingerprints on the Bible. And so the discovery process that we use is just a simple seven question process which asks the question, if I'm reading this passage and I'm asking,

What does God want me to do about it? In the next 24 to 48 hours, what does God want me to do as result of hearing from Him? And for the Greek scholars in the room, it's the hu-po-ku-o idea. It's hearing, but hearing is doing, not hearing as just simply hearing passively. And so that is a part of our disciple-making process, is that people get their fingerprints on the Bible on a regular basis, and they have a...

an I will statement actively involved in their life on a weekly basis. And in the groups that they're in, the discipling groups they're in, they're being asked about that. How did you do with that in that process? And so we are churning the truth into their lives on a regular basis, rather than counting on them hearing something from a place like this and then going home and never being asked about what they're going to do about that truth.

So that's the way we're trying to get that operational in their lives.

What role, I went to DTS too by the way. ⁓ secret handshake. I don't know that one. I I graduated in 2019. I'm not going to tell you when I graduated. Before the flood. ⁓ What role does that type of theological training have? Does it? ⁓ I'll just leave it there. Yeah.

Well, mean, for me, it's a foundation of a lot of good stuff. So there's nothing wrong with it in that regard. ⁓ But I would say that if we're counting on that process, ⁓ then it's proved itself horribly bad. I mean, in the sense of

getting someone like me to a space where I'm going to stand here and I'm going to preach the word on a regular basis and that preaching the word is going to spiritually form people who are going to then become disciples and then they're out of that going to make disciples and the church is going to move, the gospel is going to move forward. That has not happened and stuff. ⁓ I do think though that I've watched, so I have a

trained engineer friend disciple who's been through the Bible 13 times you know in the 17 years that we've known each other and He has a know read through we use a thing called three columns study to He has read through and and and and it's like he knows the Bible. I mean you you can't Mention something that he doesn't know about

and so he may not have the theological frameworks around but he knows the truth and he's lived the truth and and you can kinda trust his life because you see the kind of man he is the kind of father, husband, grandfather, worker you know that kind of stuff you see that truth in his life ⁓ I think that is a better route than

warehousing a lot of information in people's minds and hoping at some point. I think what we've done is we've practiced a kind of Christianity that is similar to the kind of eating that we do. So we live in a country that is being plagued by diabetes right now. And it comes because of overweight. And overweight comes not because of our genes,

but because of how much we eat. We eat too much of the wrong thing. And we don't exercise enough to utilize those calories, and so those calories get stored as fat in our bodies. I would suggest that what we have is a church today that has eaten too much truth and has not exercised that truth, and so that truth has been stored as fat.

in their body and that truth has become dangerous to them.

because they're highly educated beyond their own ability to trust and believe and live that out. And so it's a system that's broken in that sense. ⁓

Yeah, exactly. mean, we our whole thing is pitched to consume. You know, it's like that's what we do. We come, we got, you know, really cool singers up here and we got, you know, people can play things and do things and all that kind of stuff. And it's really pitched. And so for me, you know, just practicality, it's like

Okay, I do do that thing sometimes on Sundays. Okay, I do play in the consumeristic world. So it's like you might see me talking out of both sides of my mouth, but what it's done to me in terms of my speaking is I've come to grips with the fact that I'm a much better communicator if I'm leaving people with questions rather than giving them answers.

I would much rather irritate them.

with the questions they ought to be asking, rather than anesthetize them with the truth that I think they ought to be living. Because in adult education, if you give them the questions they ought to be asking, they're going to get their own answers. But if you give them answers, they're just going to ignore them and go away. And so coming to grips with the fact that how can I communicate as a person who raises the

questions in their minds and the tensions in their minds because adults need problems to solve to learn and in our our doing this kind of stuff, we don't really raise a lot of of Questions for them to solve we give them all the answers and hope that they will do something about it and Hope is not a good spiritual transformation strategy

John's got the microphone, I can't wait to hear this. I was gonna sing Tiny Bubbles just for you. Don Ho, yes There we go, there we go. All the stories we can't tell and thank God there was no internet back then. Roy, what are the qualifications for someone to lead discussion in the group?

So for us, I'm just going to for our, know, we have a liturgy. That may seem strange for me to say, but we have a liturgy that we follow. And it's seven questions. It's a seven question, what are you thankful for, challenge, ⁓ serve, ⁓ Bible reading, ⁓ you know, I will statement. ⁓

Who you're share with and then in the comeback is what'd do with what you learned last week? I mean those things are like pounded in and that's what people do so the qualifications for us to facilitate a group is can you ask those seven questions?

has nothing to do with anything that's going on in their life spiritually whatsoever. In fact, I had the grand opportunity to put a former Dallas Seminary graduate, ⁓ head of a large mission organization here in the city, into a discovery group with a couple that had the most horrendous background you could imagine. They were involved in polyamory and all kind, they told stories that just curled my tongue, I just like,

hearing that, but Jesus got to hold their lives. And you can imagine what kind of group leaders they were. I mean, they were just as wild for Jesus as they were when they were doing that kind of, and he wanted to learn what were these discovery groups about. So I dropped him into that group. And it was funny, after about six or eight weeks, he goes, know, he's on 50, I forget what he said, 52 years old. And I have.

I've grown up in the church, I've been to more Bible studies than I can imagine, but I've never been asked and held accountable for what I studied last week when I came back to the group this week. He said, this is the first time that anyone's ever had the audacity to ask me, what did I do with the truth that I learned last week? And the guy that was facilitating the group had no, you know.

I mean, he had very little spiritual credibility whatsoever in that regard. And he is not a subject matter expert. In those groups, the subject matter expert is the Bible. And so when someone asks the theological question, it's like, OK, where do we see that in this passage? And we're always going back to the passage that we're dealing with. We're not bouncing around all over the Bible and that kind of stuff and not looking in.

Hodges systematic theology, we're in that passage and we're focused on obedience. And so the person's spiritual life is not that important, their spiritual posture is important. Am I willing to ask the questions, let the Bible be the subject matter expert? I see.

So coming from the perspective of a church that specifically is kind of dipping our toe in the water of ministries with people like this, ⁓ it is difficult with the people that feel like they know the scripture. And even as a small church,

So what do you do with them? That's really the question. ⁓ Because we can't just let anybody teach whatever they want to teach. And even when you start these groups like that, like you say, it is easy with people that don't think that they know, but as soon as they think that they do. So for me, ⁓ it was a a ⁓ re-gospeling effort.

And that was really important. My first six years, I thought it was a training problem. And so I just trained and trained and trained and trained people how to lead discovery, how to invite their non-believing friends and to read the Bible and stuff. And over time, I began to realize that it wasn't just a training problem, it was a culture problem. And so I had to address the culture as well as the

the training. And by culture, mean we stopped using the word teaching and we started using the word facilitation because we built into our culture the fact that the word teach means to cause people to learn. And we helped them understand that telling people what you know doesn't cause people to learn. What causes people to learn

is when they discover things for themselves. And so we began to re-educate the culture and just redefine words like teach, cause to learn, okay? Is what happened here causing people to learn? so ⁓ like obedience as opposed to faith, it's like we're looking for people to do what God says, not to know what God says. So is what happened here?

more knowing or more doing. And we borrowed a lot of terms. We borrowed this concept of red work and blue work. It's like red work being doing and blue work being knowing. it's like it's got to be 80 % doing and 20 % knowing. And so we began to re-educate people in terms of those types of things ⁓ and help them discover

what it looks like to be involved in seeing people transform. And so the culture, and so if you think about culture, it's two things in its most simplistic form. It's language ⁓ and it's ritual. And so we began to attack both of those. So we taught people how to facilitate discovery really well. the measure of successful discovery,

is not how much information you deliver, but it's how many questions you ask. We began to pound that into people's minds that people need questions and we use Jesus as an example. Jesus asked far more questions than he did give answers. And so we began to utilize that in our culture to understand that. And then the ritual was just understanding that

Discovery is about asking questions, not giving answers. And just over time, and people see that from the platform and on the collection strategy that we have on Sunday morning, the one side of the hybrid, would see the communicator asking questions rather than giving so many answers and suggesting things about what you ought to be thinking about rather than telling you what you should think.

And so those subtle type things begun to happen over time and slowly but surely, but it is a uphill climb. And it is like pushing a boulder up a hill. There is never momentum. I mean, I've been at this 30 years. I still don't think I've got momentum. It's every day, it's pushing that boulder up a hill and constantly helping people understand

what you mean and how it works and that kind of stuff. And it's just hard, you know. It's akin to this. You got on a train in New York and you're going to LA. And you get to Omaha and the train conductor comes on the train and says, hey, guess what? Got a new exciting adventure for you. We're not going to LA, we're going to.

Dallas and you're like I bought a train for a ticket to LA That's where I want to go what you're dealing with what we all deal with is We convinced people to get on this train and we talk told him we're going to LA and then in mid trip We tell him we're going to Dallas And they're pissed, you know, they're angry at us and it's like Certainly should be you know, I mean we're we're literally changing

the way we're doing things. And so it just takes time, effort, and enormous amount of grace to get people to understand what you're talking about. But at the heart of it, sort of the true north on the compass is that, look, we're trying to do what Jesus said. Jesus didn't say meet on Sunday, sing a bunch of songs, have someone talk for 30 minutes, take an offering, put kids in. He didn't say that. What he said is,

Take this truth to every ethne, ta ethne, every culture, every language, every space. And that's what we're trying to do. And you just keep the mission forefront. And mission unifies, methods don't unify. And so it's a little bit like, let me see if I can use this analogy here. I got it right here.

It's a little bit like this picture here.

See what's going on.

Somebody went onto their social media and said, hey, let's meet in the park and play ball.

Half the people came ready to play cricket, the other half came to play baseball. It's not gonna work very well because there's nothing there. ⁓ When you bowl as a cricketer, you can't bend your elbow. But as a baseball pitcher, you've gotta bend that elbow to get that speed. ⁓

As a boulder, you're trying to knock the wicket down. As a pitcher, you're trying to strike them out. You're going to have only basically one base or two spots in cricket. You're have four in base. So it doesn't fit. So we are introducing a whole new way of thinking for them. And we've got to have a lot of patience and grace in helping them understand because as humans, we live in short code.

You know, have these, we see patterns and we have conditioned an entire ⁓ generations, generations upon generations of the pattern of Sunday to Sunday to Sunday to Sunday. And we've conditioned them to think that I get my batteries charged on Sunday, the batteries run out during the week and I need to get back to this Sunday thing to get them recharged. And we're turning the.

deal around them and saying no, no, no, that's just not how works at all. You need to get your batteries charged on a daily basis by your own connection with God. You shouldn't have to come back here to get your batteries charged. This is maybe where the team meets to think about the new battles that we're gonna face and all that kind of stuff, but it's not where, it's not a hospital, it's not a place where you get your batteries charged. So there's so much struggle that we have and...

in making this change and I think, you know, it's like we have to come to grips with the fact that it's just hard. I mean, it's really hard. And people look at us and I mean, I feel like for me, being as old as I am, I'm trying to sort of make a way to help people understand there are old codgers out there who do think this is right. And for those of you who are young,

They look at you like you're just some kind of crazy person. And it's like, no, no, no, no, you're not crazy. You just have the heart of Jesus. And it just takes patience and effort and grace and patience and effort and grace to get it through. I know that's not encouraging, but.

It's worth it though. Is it on? Okay, it's on. As a past children's minister, I hear what you're talking about with adults. How young do you integrate this into ⁓ like retraining a whole new generation and with youth? Like is that a separation or do you integrate that in with the adults? I know that's a lot altogether but. As soon as they can read. I mean, we've had fourth graders, know, facilitating groups with their fellow fourth graders.

after school. ⁓ We've, you know, kids, know, like third graders in children's ministry doing discovery together. ⁓ Parents and kids doing discovery, know, preteens leading, you know, a group of couples and parents and families, you know, in facilitation. So I think it happens.

as early as it can in that process. And it gives that younger generation a vision ⁓ for what could be and what should be. Now, that sounds like it's easy, but it's not. It takes effort to, and so for instance, with kids, what are you thankful for? That can fall flat with kids.

So it's like, what made you smile this week?

What challenges do you have? So what made you frown this week? And reframing some of those questions like that so that they're age appropriate for kids when they're doing it together or you're doing it in some kind of program type deal. I do think it is like, ⁓ for instance, I meet with a bunch of guys on the

Monday morning to pray and ⁓ several of the dads or young dads and their kids get out of bed and crawl out and come onto the couch and they sit through the prayer time with us. know, and it's, it's perfect. I mean, I just, I would dream of that if my kids were been around at that time. So I don't know if I'm answering what you're asking or. yeah, I used to, ⁓

home school and we called it tutoring. It wasn't teaching. But at different ages, there's different ways that their brains work. And so at the younger age, it was just giving them information. And then they hit the rhetoric where it was more of what you're talking about, where it was asking.

As soon as they can read, you know, children's Bibles using the video version of the children's Bible that U-version has in their app to have the stories told on video, on a phone, all those kind of things can be used.

to help people facilitate. let me go back to something. Phil, were you gonna ask a question or you? After you do this, yeah. So, re-gospeling.

the gospel that I grew up on.

was a bunch of facts about Jesus's life ⁓ when he lived and he died and he rose again. ⁓ And a part of my mindset shift was to come to grips with the fact that I don't see that when Jesus, it says Jesus came preaching the gospel of the kingdom. I just don't see the way we've domesticated the gospel.

into these facts. I don't want to make light of those facts. I don't want to demean those facts. Those facts are precious and important and valuable and operative and, you know, but they are not all there is. The idea of the cross being a finish line, I think is obnoxious to Jesus.

It should be a starting point, not a finish line. And the way we gospel with people is very much ⁓ crosses the finish line. And so coming to grips with this, how do I re-gospel people? One of the languages that we have used in terms of, and again, one of the things that drives me is these little phrases in the back of my mind.

Words make worlds. And so the gospel being a call to be in the family. And so Luke 15, 20 through 24, this idea of Jesus drawing a picture of the father who's longing for his son. And you all know it well what I'm talking about. And it says, you

He saw the sun from afar off. And we regularly take people into these kinds of passages and just ask questions like, how in the world did he see his son from afar off?

I mean, he, you know, a couple of weeks ago, a month or two ago, the lottery got up to a billion six, something like that? Someone from Arkansas won. That wouldn't be anyone in this room, is there?

⁓ Now, it's like I always buy a lottery ticket when it gets over a billion dollars. I don't know why. Maybe it's my flesh. Maybe I need to confess that and eradicate that from my flesh. But I just buy a ticket. It's like, but I've never won, you know? And I'm wondering, did the father win the lottery that day?

Did he buy the ticket and choose that one day to go out there and wait for his son? You think that's what was happening?

What do you think was happening?

every day. Let me think about this for a moment.

We have a lovesick father standing on the edge of town, longing for his son to come home. That's the picture that Jesus is drawing of God for us. We have a lovesick father.

can't wait for his idiot son to come home.

That is not the God that most people who sit in spaces like this serve. That is not, they don't see that they have a lovesick God who is just desperate for his family to be gathered. And so as we gospel people, we help them understand that you not only get a chance to be in the family, but you get a chance to be in the family business.

And the family business is finding your not yet brothers and sisters and introducing them to their father. You get the joy of being there ⁓ as they meet their father and learn to live in his favor for the first time. That is what a redemptive community that Jesus refers to as ecclesia should be about.

And so re-gospeling people to help them understand that. One last thing, Phil, and I'll go back to your question. ⁓ So ⁓ I bet every one of your spaces has a discipleship program. You all got discipleship programs? Or maybe you're hip and cool. You call it disciple making. ⁓

Maybe you're not so hip and cool because you just changed the label and you thought you would change the contents of it. It's like, you know, ripping the Coke label off and putting a Pepsi label on and thinking you've done something to the contents of the bottle. But think about this. What are all of our discipleship programs aimed at?

It's a trick question, I know. Making Christians better, right? I mean, is that ⁓ a fair assessment? And all of them are based out of what? What verse in the Bible?

Matthew 28, you can say Jesus, but it's Matthew 28. Matthew 28. So think about this for a moment. When Jesus gave the command, the last command, go therefore and make disciples.

What is the audience that he's telling us to go to?

That's who he's talking to, but what is he telling them to do?

Go therefore and make disciples. He's giving this command, go make disciples.

That's a good question. He tells you right there.

Not in that passage, he doesn't. No. Yeah, yeah. So he says, therefore and make disciples, Baptizing them in the name of the Father, you know, and teaching them to what? Obey all things, all right? But who is the audience he's telling the disciples or the apostles, however you want, who is he telling them to go to? All ethne. Ta ethne, lost people.

Matthew 28, Jesus aims his followers to lostness.

And that's who we're supposed to go disciple.

is go disciple lost people.

But most of what we've grown up in in Christianity is programs that are based off of Matthew 28 that are aimed at found people.

There's something wrong with that.

I it's like, I think there's something, maybe I'm odd and off, but we're the disciple lost people, and yet, what do we do? We evangelize them. We don't disciple them. How do we come up with that? Where did that come from? And those are the kinds of things that have sort of screwed me up.

May I bring another issue that we're dealing with in this modern world and that is kids grow up in church, they go to college and the first time they get into a difficulty or a professor asks a question about their Christianity and they can't answer it, the next thing you hear is the deconstruction of their faith and they make a big deal of it. Have you heard of that? How does this fit into that?

You know, the new, the.

presenting the gospel in the way that you've explained just now. I'm trying to get an idea how to talk to these kids. Well, I would suggest that they've grown up in a world where they've been told about Jesus, but the actual life of following Jesus, putting into practice what Jesus said hasn't been

a habit of their world. so they struggle with the professor who can argue about the facts and present things in ways that seem like they're not true, and it confuses them as opposed to having a life experience of understanding that Jesus is trustable. That I've experienced Jesus is trustworthiness in my life.

That's an apologetic in and of itself. And we don't have much of that, probably why 80 % of those students bail on Jesus when they hit that college age.

I'm curious, ⁓ I'm looking at the group and our group is changing, turning over constantly, new people coming in and I'm curious, how many of you have been through the Bonhoeffer project?

Our expectation, our hope is, that any and every one of our church plants goes through that 10 month exploratory process with others to go back and rethink gospel and start asking the questions you're asking. I wanna make sure I'm understanding your story well, because I'm not sure, not very many had read spent matches, which caught my attention. I was just assuming it, but then it dawned on me, well, we're a few years away since the last time we bought it for everybody, so we may need to get that book back out to them. You have a new book called Hybrid Church, which is available. ⁓

My understanding of your story is you did build a, about a thousand member or at least a thousand attendants, prevailing model, seeker oriented gathering church. And at that point you became disillusioned. You didn't shut it down, you just started focusing elsewhere too. Are you living in both worlds in a sense equally or are you mostly putting most of your attention? In a sense I'm hearing you say through hybrid church you have two engines or you have in a sense two churches.

One is working on Sunday morning gathering seekers, sort of the Willow Creek approach. And then the other one is doing small groups, but not really trying to get them to come to Sunday morning ever. Yeah, and we call it a network. Yeah, flesh that out for us if you So we think of that network, and that's where we look at these biblically flourishing communities we're trying to build. And we don't care if they come back or not to Sunday morning. That doesn't have to be an experience.

for them because the gathering, the larger gathering is not vital. Gathering is vital, but not the large gathering that we have on Sunday morning is not vital. ⁓ And so we really try to raise up people who, like a crew of people who have a heart for ⁓ the incarcerated. And so they're focused on a local, the Clay County jail.

and they have began to plant the gospel inside the ⁓ jail as well as care for the families and for the formerly incarcerated as they come out and gather them into a church basically. We want them to call themselves church. I don't like the word church necessarily. It's not a good English translation of ecclesia, but.

They meet on Saturday mornings with those families and incarcerated and... Both models are equally church. Yeah. Now on a week to week basis for you, how much of your energy goes into pulling off a Sunday or how much of your energy is going into the networks? So for me, I would say it's 70-30 in the sense is that 70 is outside, 30 is inside. But like ⁓ we operate off of EOS. I know if anybody know what EOS is, Entrepreneurial Operating System. It's just a...

a way of getting traction in an organization. I am the visionary, and the visionary doesn't carry any ⁓ rocks, that's our 90-day goals and stuff, ⁓ but I do carry a responsibility for the external marketing of the Sunday morning experience. My major responsibility is the marketing function outside. ⁓

I coach and train in the community on the other side. An analogy that may be helpful is we think of ourselves as a server. Now this used to work better when servers were actually physical before we got to the cloud. a server is basically ⁓ a function that resources things.

space like this at one point, they would have had a physical, big, huge computer in here ⁓ that if you came in with a laptop or an iPad or an iPhone or a tablet or ⁓ even a desktop, it would allocate resources to you ⁓ to do what you needed to do with that device. We think of ourselves as a ⁓ server church at Shoal Creek. We allocate resources to whatever expression of ecclesia

that God wants to bring about. And so if it's on a sports team that's a traveling sports team, the family's riddled with guilt, that they are worshiping an idol of family and traveling every weekend, we decide to go in, can we redeem that? You are spending a lot of time with people. Let's plant the gospel amongst those people as you attempt to get your kid to some

athletic level that they're never going to get to. Let's redeem that, that kind of thing. Or the jail. Or a couple that shows a bit of twinge of guilt that they play pickleball four nights a week. Retired, empty nest couple. And it's like, hey, there are 70 people in that pickleball league that need Jesus. What if we focus in on that, and we refer to it as a circle of accountability?

We draw a circle and say, you're be responsible for lossness in this circle. What if you attempt to plant the gospel in that circle of accountability and that pickleball league that meets four nights a week and plays pickleball? ⁓ So we attempt to create that kind of idea on the outside of things. And the real truth, it's like.

On stage, always looks cleaner than it does. In books, it always looks cleaner than it does in reality. The real truth is a lot of those people do end up coming on Sunday morning. Because in the US, we live in a churched culture. And when someone's spiritual genes kick in, there is something about an American that knows that if I'm spiritual and Jesus has something to do with it, the right place to be on Sunday morning

between nine and 12 is in a box with the label church on it. And it's hard to push back against that. There are very few people that have a sense of I can do a Jesus thing outside of this box. So we do see a fair number of people actually make their way to Sundays. So on behalf of some of the guys in the room, I think we have some church planners in the room that aren't necessarily thinking Sunday morning is the fix all.

They're trying to implement disciple making approaches and strategies and they're doing their best to do that. And I guess I would think you probably have had a history of starts and stops, starts and stops. At least please tell us you had a history of starts and stops. Because it sure seems like for our guys that really decide to focus on disciple making, it's hard to get traction on that. Harder than it is to pull off a Sunday. So how many of you read the book Miraculous Movements? Anybody read Miraculous Movements? Wow, that's amazing.

Okay, so don't go read the book, Maracas Movement. So Jerry Trousdale tells a story of the Sub-Saharan Africa work that began in 2003. And we always think things happen so incredible overseas. And right now that movement's at three million people, 160,000 churches, and it's got all the glory that you can imagine to it. But you go back to 2003 to 2008,

And it is literally ugly. Starts, stops, wrong people, bad motives, money wasted, all kinds of ugly stuff happens in that early part of the miraculous movement story. And I've told Jerry Trousdale before, said, look, you should write the prequel, which would be really helpful to those of us in the West. Because all we get is the above ground story.

You know, when we hear what's going on there or booze, pory and that kind of stuff. And the below ground story is really, really ugly and messy. And in fact, I know many of the characters and sometimes you look at it you go, wow, this is encouraging. If God can do that through you, I think he could do it through me too. Cause you're kind of messed up, you know? It's like, they're just.

Ordinary people, and they just kept at it long enough that God showed up and wild things happened.

Okay, so I get a question, before that a comment, I'm gonna need you to say- Is this Andrew the lesser? The lesser, that's right, everybody knows. ⁓ I'm gonna need you to say less things like, I'm a visionary and so I don't carry many 90-day rocks, my boss smiled way too big when you said that. ⁓ So fewer things like that. question is, ⁓ what's the most common pushback you get, criticism, maybe we call it the thing people like to tell you that you're wrong about the most, and how do you filter that, and what's the response?

There's gotta be two or three things that come up a lot for you. There are things that come up a lot, like what about heresy comes up? Or how does a group become a church? That comes up a lot.

You know, think one that comes up a lot that has to be explained is what about teaching? You know, isn't there a gift of teaching? What about the gifts? And that comes up a lot. And I think, you know, the way I answered it is a little bit the way I answered it before here is the fact that there are those gifts, and they do, they are evident. ⁓ And there are places for people

to ⁓ design learning experiences for people and that kind of stuff. There are places for people to even to speak prophetically in those regards. I would say that the main thing is that the discovery process I've been talking about, it does work very well with people well into their.

mature years of spiritual journey, no doubt about it. where it's most important is we're trying to eliminate dependency.

And the Christianity that I've grown up in, it just gives birth to dependency. Either you're dependent on an individual, someone who's quote, led you to Jesus, or an institution, a youth group, or a camp experience, or a local fellowship that had profound experience in your life, and you're always trying to find that for the rest of your life. ⁓ And so that dependency issue is what you're trying to.

or off, and so you're trying to get people to be dependent on their Father in heaven first and foremost. That they can hear from God, they can do what he says, and he will engineer spiritual growth in their lives ⁓ apart from all these other things. That they can have this face-to-face relationship with God. Once that's set, once they have that clear in their own life,

⁓ then having people explain things to them can be helpful at times. ⁓ But they don't have the ⁓ ability or they don't have the tendency to want to be ⁓ dependent on that person. ⁓ And so I think that would be probably the teaching thing and the preaching goes right along with that.

My turn? Okay. So Roy, what I'm thinking is when I hear you, because are you saying both and, you know, we still need Sunday or do you see a movement to where this is primarily something that everybody, the priesthood of believers, which is awesome, which is awesome, but that a guy can stay in his job or a gal can stay in her job and literally that

that it's not necessary to draw any type of salary or anything, that you can, that now everybody can start a group. And so that's the second part of it. So, but are you a both and person or you'd rather move towards just DMM? Go ahead. No, I would be a both and person. Yes. You know, in that sense is that, again, the server analogy, you know, whatever expressions of ecclesia God raises up. Now, you know, I think

You know, if I were starting again, I would not try to, you know, recruit a core group and plant a gathering on Sunday morning as my main emphasis. I might take a different journey to that. Now, it might end up there. Yes. You know, it might end up there. I'm OK with that. I think I love what we do on Sunday morning. See, I think that that's what especially when we're, you know.

What we're good at here in Nexus, we're good at planning Sunday center churches. We're good at it, right? And I'm somebody that has been adopted in only since 2018, but you know, Hawaiians, we claim everything. So I claim us too. But I think that it's important to hear that, because we got some people in here that are bivocational and they're thinking about a small group, you know, almost a DMM approach to that. And I think that I wanted you all to hear that.

It's a possibility to do both because what Roy's talking about is a way to really unleash your members. mean, unleash them at a level you've never seen. But the thing is, guys like us that are good at the word of God, we gotta get past the little tippy-toeing of some of the heresy things that I do. You read, that's why they wrote the New Testament, because it was messy. It was messy. And we've got, we're looking for pastors out there that are willing to.

Let your members make mistakes and be messy. Because the devil is kicking our you know what, when it comes to salvation. Now, but it doesn't go away from good theology or all the things that we wanna do. But we're just inviting more people to get involved. That's what I hear you saying Roy, just getting a whole lot more of our members who saying, you know what, you can manage these seven questions. Am I hearing you? This is, let me give you a tool that you can take into your business office.

And I would just say, John, that when I think about where are the social networks that we can access with the gospel, a lot of people will say, oh, I to reach my neighborhood. Well, then you start to say, well, how many of your neighbors do you know? Exactly. Well, I know the lady across the street. I know the guy next door here. But it's like, is that it? Yeah, so you don't know like 40 of your neighbors or that kind of stuff. And it's like your neighborhood is not a social network.

But where you work, it is a social network. Because people relate 40 to 50 hours a week in that space. Now, they may not relate well. But they relate to one another. That's where the wiring of social networks exists is in the marketplace. And if we don't get our eyes on that, in the West especially, then we're never going to see the.

the gospel move significantly, because they're just not gonna come. I we can invite, invite, and we can put all the postcards and billboards and special things and kids and all that kind of stuff, but that just only goes so far. And we've been trying for centuries to get people to quote, share their faith. And as much as we've tried, it gets to 10%. And so,

Somehow we've got to have a different strategy and that marketplace is just asking for it. I know so many business leaders, ⁓ business owners especially, that are so open to making the gospel friendly in their spaces if they just had people to work with them. Because as an owner, they don't feel like pressing it down. But if they have people that work for them that are interested in doing gospel work in the workplace.

⁓ my gosh, it's got such potential. And I dream of that happening, working with a lot of people who are doing that kind of thing. so, yeah, it's.

Time to stop, Andrew.

One more.

How do the groups select what they're studying? So this is where I think the gift of teaching comes along, is that designing the curriculum is basically building the path. So we've built a path. ⁓ We refer to it as the journeys of the discipled life. And it starts, and it's got seven categories to it.

You can use ours, you can build your own, whatever. A lot of people in the DMM world would refer to creation to Christ. And it would be a route through the Bible that would help people understand why Jesus lived and died and rose again, what the kingdom gospel looks like, that he came not only to bring you into family, but to bring you into the family business so you can turn around and do the same thing for other people. So they'll move anywhere from

25 to 45 passages, you from Genesis to Revelation ⁓ We move in this this ⁓ these categories of earner to air We feel like that's a really important and so we've got 16 or 17 passages of scripture that help people come to grips with the fact that that you can't earn God's favor that the beauty about being on a spiritual journey is that God chose you you don't get to choose him and and he infuses

you with all kinds of resources, spiritual resources. So earner to heir, receiver to giver, ⁓ traveler to guy. We go through these seven things like that. there are number of different things that you can look at in that regard. ⁓ And maybe tomorrow I'll talk about a few tools that you can use to build those in the AI world, actually. We've got a few AI tools that actually you can build your own using

some AI stuff that we've trained off of just our resources.

Yeah, I mean you can, you know, but I don't, I think that there's a path that you want to put them on through the Bible.

The habits of a replicating disciple is just, again, back to culture, language, ritual, and so this idea of there are some fundamental things that if you're going to be a replicating disciple that you need to keep your eyes on. And so we've built this cycle or this flywheel that we move around, and this idea that starts with the heart of the father.

It always, everything connects to the heart of the Father. And it begins just like the disciples. When Jesus called those guys to himself, ⁓ they saw what he was doing and they asked him, teach us to pray. We think of prayer as talking to God, but actually they were asking something radically different ⁓ than just to be able to mouth words to God. And so that tends to be the first thing is that intimacy with the Father and then engaging the lost.

⁓ understanding what it's like to find those unique people that God are working with, those persons of peace, asking them into discovery, building these cultures of accountability, and then moving into assembly where these old cultures become actual ecclesia, and then building a culture of replication around that. And there are some structures that can happen inside that that help facilitate that.

And it just keeps, for those of you who have a farm background, know what it was like to start the old tractor. I had a guy show me a picture on Sunday. He was so excited. He says, I got my John Deere running. And he's like, I'm 1956 John Deere. And he was plowing with it and stuff. But if you grew up like I did, you had to crank that sucker and crank and crank and crank and crank. And then finally, kicked off. That's the image we have of this cycle that has to.

happen to be able to keep the momentum going.

Nexus: Church Planting & Le... (1:03:04)

Thank you for checking out the Nexus Church Planting Podcast. We hope this conversation was helpful and inspires you to lean deeper into your calling. If you want to learn more about Nexus, visit us at nexus.us. There you'll find church planting resources, upcoming trainings, events, and more. We also want to encourage you to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Leave a review or rating to help others find us.

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